Asparagus Maximus’
Sunday
is pinning my tongue to the roof of my mouth. It is like every Sunday, cold,
and the sun is a thorn. The stem of the sun is a smooth seven hours since dawn.
The sea does not have a smell. The bloom of the sun is, all in all, color
bundled around a thorn. I have been sucking on the thorn of the sun and it has
pinned my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I like cemeteries the way I like golf
courses.
The dead make quiet fields where the grass is
green. The dead make sacred spaces. There are no dogs. Death makes spaces sacred. There is no entrance
fee. Death makes bodies sacred. The grave is not hollow. Death fills the grave.
The sky is blue, the cloud is white, the sun is a thorn. The bloom of the sun
is all color pinching a thorn. Cold, the grass is green, the bloom of the sun
is all color, the stone is white. The stone is smooth. The stem of the sun is
smooth. The bloom of the sun is all color. The stone is white. The dead are
still and the living watch. There is no entrance fee, there are no flowers, the
grass is green, the sea does not smell of salt. The dead are not alive and the
living will not die.
The stone rises, stems of all color, blooms of
white light. The stems are burning where the sun has struck. The stone is a
stem. The sky is blue and the cloud is white. The grass is green and the cloud
is a shadow. The sun is a thorn hidden in a bloom and its stem is the shadow of
seven hours since dawn. The grass is green and the stone is white. The stone’s
shadow is the shadow of a dawn. The bloom of the sun is wrinkled. The grave is
not hollow. The sun has one stem.
The stone has a thousand, and a
thousand death days. The heartbeat is not hollow. There are no dogs. The grass
is green. The stem of the sun has the span of seven hours and no width. Seven hours
since dawn. I have been turning the thorn of the sun in my mouth. The width
between the dead has been calculated. Each stone is a stem. Each stem has a
death day and a state.
The names of states. The state of grace.
The stone is white like salt. There are no
flowers. The stone is smooth like a sunstem. The stone is unperturbed like the
seven hours trailing behind the sun since dawn. Time is unperturbed. The sea
does not smell. Not like salt. Not like death. Neither like Sunday nor dog. The
grass is green. The grass is soft. The earth is soft, almost mud. The ocean
does not smell. The stone is silent. The body of the statue of a man rising is
hollow. The sun has a bloom. The bloom is not hollow, grips a thorn. The sun is
a thorn. The sun is not hollow. The grave is not hollow. The body of man is not
hollow. The body of man is full of water. Death drinks. The grave is not
hollow. It is full of water, the body of man. The grave sprouts a stem. The
bloom of the sun is all color. The stone is white.
Death
does not reach out to touch this Sunday. Death has stone stems in a thousand
graves full of the water of the body of man. There are no flowers. The ocean
has no smell. The stone is white like salt. The grass is green and from the
graves, full of the bodies of man, the white stems rise and cast shadows. The
shadows sweep the grave. The stone stems rise white like salt. There are no
dogs. The sea has no smell. The bodies of man took the odor of the sea with
them to the grave. Death does not reach out to touch me. I do not touch the
stone. If we touch too much we will be pierced by the thorn of the sun and the
bloom of the sun would soon hallow the all in all color of salt stems taking
root in the water of our bodies. We would taste the mud and we would forget. We
would fill in the silent spaces death makes. We would hand our bodies over. We
would. Piece by piece. We would foot it over. Death would diminish our bodies
into sacred silences. We would shoulder it over. See it through. Too much sight
is burning. Too much sight is white. Too much sight is all color. The grass is
soft. The earth is soft, is almost mud. Nearly mud. Dearly beloved. Dearly
bemudded, we gather, hear, to say: Stone is made into mirror in mirror in
mirror and the dead are never parted. To gather, hear too much and drown. The
sea does not smell. Foul are the bodies of man which took the odor of the sea
with them into the grave. If the sea had an odor, we would suffocate. There is
no entrance fee.
We
are spoiled by knowledge. We think it’s simple to learn a thing. All in all, it
takes a diagram, or a word. The stone is silent. The stone is blooming all in
all in all color. The stone is white. The stone is speaking in ways the dead
would never have spoken. It does them justice. Fraternity has been planted like
an orderly orchard. From here to there the earth has been salted. Fraternity
has been sunk into the mud. The odor of our brothers took up residence in our
nostrils. We have been suffocated. The bloom of the sun has stained the stone
of all color and the shadow of a thousand death day stems in the state of grace
sweep the green grass where there are no flowers. The sea has no smell. The
earth is nearly mud. The body of man is full of water. The grave is not hollow.
Death drinks. Our mothers caress us. The salt scrapes against us. Our vision is
floating. We are pierced by thorns.
I
would like to have seen the earth as the bodies of man went in, the unbuttoned
earth. The living watch. The dead are still sunken. The voices of our fathers,
hollow, broke against the sandy breast of the shore. We were drowned here. I
would like to believe in the ghosts of man. I would like the ghosts of man to
sit on the shore, watching the elaboration of a word: Peace. Our children’s
mouths are full of milk. We forget. Our children’s mouths are pierced through
with thorns. I would like to burn my body on a pyre before the hollow statue of
a man rising. Spread the smell of my body. Our sisters saw our sins. We have
been burned by their bloom. I would like to take the thorn of the sun between
my legs. I would like to burn the stem of my sex in the bloom of the sun. Burn
the guilt of waste. Burn the waste of guilt for the nakedness of the bodies of
man. The guilt of our nakedness diffused throughout the hollow human mass and
sex mirroring the motions of the mob. The guilt of our nakedness, the water of
our bodies burning between the nude and the smooth, diffused.
Not
all in all of the bodies of man are there with their names in the state of
grace. Some of their bodies were sent over the sea again, bundled in the bloom
of battle, to mothers who scolded them for passing in pieces to the grave. For
returning with the odor of the ocean and filling their sisters’ nostrils the
way death fills the grave. Not all in all are here or there. Some of their
bodies in dying had been ripped away from the shore’s sandy breast.
Some
of them, in dying, remembered the girls they had known. The ammunition came out
chattering. The ammunition came out to ruffle their hair and set butterflies
loose in their stomachs. The bullets came out to tug at their elbows, to be
taken into their arms, to kiss their necks and set a flame in their chests. The
ammunition came out like girls to part their lips and stain their mouths a
blooming red. The bullets came out to shiver through their spines and break
their burning hearts.
Some
men talked about what they would like to have go forth after death. Some of
them did not want stone mirrors in the bloom of the sun. Some men did not talk
about choices after death. Some of them did not choose death. They did not
choose it in the enlistment lines. They did not choose it on arriving, when at
dawn a thorn sprouted out of the earth where there should have been extremities
to push back the void. They did not choose death as their lower halves, booted,
shook beneath the waves and their upper halves, helmeted, shouldered it over.
Split in two. They did not see that the white of the waves would be the white
of their stones. And the salt of the sea would be the salt of their graves. The
water of the bodies of these men, split in two, would be the water from which
their white stems would sprout.
The
earth sprouted a thorn at dawn and the salt water sprouted the body of man.
These men did not choose death. They did not choose death, they did not speak
its name. Their eyes were rising towards death’s plateaus. They shot bullets in
death’s direction. They wanted to kill death. They wanted to move death far
from them. They did not talk about death, some of them. They did not want it on
their breath. They did not want death pooling in their mouths, replacing their
tongues, brushing their teeth, chewing their gums. Death was there and it would
have not been polite to speak of it as if it were not.